Inverters are known in the prior art for use with printmaking devices, particularly to invert a sheet of paper along a feed path. This allows for various operations, including front and back printing. Commonly, tri-roll inverters are used, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,864 to Roux et al. With a tri-roll inverter, paper is introduced through a first nip of a tri-roll arrangement and fed into a reversing nip. The reversing nip accepts the sheet of paper moving in a first direction, causes the sheet of paper to stop and then drive the paper in a second direction, opposite that from the first direction. Upon being driven in the reverse direction, the sheet of paper is caused to pass through a second nip of the tri-roll arrangement. This allows for a sheet of paper to be flipped in orientation relative to the feed path.
With ever increasing volumes and velocities with printmaking devices, speed of handling paper at particular processes becomes a limiting factor. With a tri-roll arrangement, the need to accelerate the reversing nip in one direction, stopping and causing reverse movement provides a limiting factor as to the number of sheets per time intervals that can be handled through this arrangement. Although rapid servo motors and controls are available, the tri-roll inversion process can only be sped up to a certain level.